However,we feel there is much to be learned from taking a step back and considering research focused on the effects of any environmental noise on wildlife, whether it is anthropogenic or 'natural'. This enables researchers to take advantage of over a half-century of extensive laboratory work conducted on well-characterised focal species such as rats (Rattus norvegicus) and mice (Mus musculus)Although the results of this work may not be broadly applicable to all species and habitats, they provide a useful starting point for
formulating detailed hypotheses about which life history characteristics
might be influenced by noise and under what conditions.
Furthermore, a good portion of the general noise literature explores
relationships that have not yet been investigated in an anthropogenic
context, including the effects of noise stress on various aspects of
physiology and development. Understanding how acoustic stimuli
impact these fundamental biological processes is vital for elucidating
the mechanisms linking environmental noise with animal behaviour
(including distribution throughout the landscape) and both proximate
and ultimate impacts on fitness traits.
It is our hope that this review will promote interdisciplinary
collaboration, allowing us to understand the effects of noise from the
level of the gene all the way up to landscape-level patterns and
processes. To that end, we have considered a divetse array of literature
on captive and wild animals from a variety of taxa. There is an
emphasis on terrestrial animals - particularly mammals - because
these are the species that have received the most attention. As this is a
relatively broad overview, we have sometimes focused on representative
results rather than performing an exhaustive review. We have
organised our discussion into eight categories that correspond to
systems that are impacted by exposure to environmental noise: the
neuroendocrine system, reproduction and development, metabolism,
cardiovascular health, cognition and sleep, audition and cochlear
morphology, the immune system, and DNA integrity and genes.
Although rve have arranged the discussion into discrete secrions
associated with each of these categories, we wish to stress that these
systems often interact (as we note in many examples). We begin with
the neuroendocrine system, perhaps the most macrobiological